1. Introduction Sustainable development is a complex phenomenon, which encompasses several dimensions (e.g. economic, social and environmental) and operates at different scales both in time as well as in space. The complexity and multidimensionality of the issue has given raise to the need for integrated approaches that can deal with such complex issues. In recent years a number of projects have been initiated at the EU-level in the field of Integrated Sustainability Analysis. The aim of the FORESCENE project is to devise a forecasting framework and scenarios to support the EU Sustainable Development Strategy. In doing so, it focuses on the environmental areas of resource use and waste, water and water use, and landscape, biodiversity and soils. Despite the fact that the concept of sustainable development, as defined by the famous Brundtland report ‘Our common future’ has been around for two decades, natural resources continue to be used in an unsustainable manner. This was also recently highlighted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment initiative, which reported that around two thirds of ecosystem services examined are severely degraded or used unsustainably (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). The reports notes that while there have been substantial gains in economic development and well-being during the past 50 years, these “have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services, increased risks of non-linear changes and the exacerbation of poverty”. In order to devise effective strategies for sustainable development, it is vital to gain a profound knowledge of specific environmental problems and to determine the driving forces standing behind these problems. In addition, the multidimensionality of sustainable development and the complexity of environment-economy interlinkages requires taking an integrated approach, identifying cross-cutting drivers rather than looking at each environmental problem area and/or driving force in isolation. The aim of this report is twofold: first, to delineate the environmental topic areas resource use and waste, water and water use and landscape, biodiversity and soils. The second aim of the report is to determine cross-cutting driving forces for the three environmental topic areas.
Resource use and waste The current resource use of industrial countries may not serve as a global model. If the current total material consumption of these countries were adopted world-wide this would lead to an increase of global resource consumption by a factor of 2 to 5 until 2050 (Bringezu et al. 2003). Because most of the resource requirements, usually about 90%, are naturally non-renewable1 minerals, the current resource use is associated with a continuous change of the world’s surface and steady change of landscapes. Current use of biomass also already leads to global degradation of ecosystems. Actual
1
14
within time scales relevant for human and biological systems´ adaptation